ALGOL-GENIUS an Early Success for High-Level Languages
ALGOL-GENIUS An Early Success for High-level Languages Bengt Asker Formerly of Datasaab and Ericsson AB Abstract: Algol-Genius, an Algol 60 implementation with features from COBOL, was the brainchild of Börje Langefors. In 1964, assembler was the dominant programming language, but Algol-Genius broke that trend among Datasaab D21 customers. Algol-Genius programs were still in production in the late nineties. Key words: Algol, Datasaab computers, programming languages 1. INTRODUCTION The main topic of this paper is the programming language Algol-Genius. Since the history of the first Datasaab computers, D21 and D22 had little representation at this conference, I will place Algol-Genius in the context of Datasaab’s early history. 2. HOW DATASAAB WAS BORN Saab was one of the first organizations in Sweden to use computers on a large scale. Aircraft design required extensive computing. Initially, women did this on desk calculators. Börje Langefors pioneered the of use punch card machines for matrix calculations. When Besk became available, Saab was one of the heavy users and soon built a copy, called Sara. These efforts meant that Saab early on acquired competence in software development. On a parallel line, in other parts of Saab, Viggo Wentzel designed a transistorized digital computer, aiming at an airborne version. The result was a prototype, one of the first transistorized computers in the world, called D2, which he demonstrated to the Swedish air force in 1960. It was a desktop computer; in fact, it covered the entire desktop. See Figure 1. Figure 1. The D2 desktop computer Algol-genius 2 Saab had attempted to diversify from a total dependence on military products.
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